kodokan

In that case, you seriously need to find a new doctor. Mine has never tried to upsell me anything, ever.

And in fact my husband's company puts $1k in our HSA each year as a thank you ('bribe') for getting the annual check up and taking an interest in maintaining our current good health, so for us the check up is a money-making scheme!

Speedwell

And that's something that we US-born people need to learn as much as, if not more than, the UK people to whom you directed that comment

I'm especially sensitive to that since I travel so much and have to train people in other countries. In Dubai I actually had two engineers refuse to be in my training class once they found out I am a woman (my name isn't obviously gendered and they assumed I was a man).

But wherever you are, it seems pointless to me to object to the fact of having a child's health checked out, even if it is on a different schedule or if it is more comprehensive than you're used to (you wouldn't object to having your car checked before a trip, even if it wasn't part of the maintenance schedule, would you?).

The stupidity of the cost and the total asininity of the US so-called "health care" system, that I can definitely agree with. Yes, doctors have to be vigorously resisted when they try to "upsell" because often they see "more cost" as "better care". My doctors know by now that I will usually ask whether a medication, for example, is really more effective than a cheaper, older remedy. Often it is not. Often a test can be rescheduled or made unnecessary, if the issue isn't urgent ("let's see what the results are from the blood test before we go for that MRI"). The best way I've found to ask is to smile and say, "That's kind of a lot of money for me; is there some way we can work things out so it doesn't cost so much?"

kodokan

Well, it's been fun, but I'm off to bed now. To conclude in answer to your original question, the majority of us see the compulsory medical as something perfectly standard for an activity like camp, and place it somewhere on the scale between 'harmless' and 'could actually be a benefit, if it picks up an underlying condition or teaches your son that doctors can be good, helpful people'.

As you said, your son is enjoying Scouts and is successfully integrating and making friends. It's now up to you to decide if you're going to allow your preconceived notions from your upbringing to dictate how his childhood pans out, or whether you'll be packing him a kit bag and waving him off on the bus come summer.

I wish you well with it, either way. And that's not sarcastically meant - having so far brought up my kids in 3 countries, I've had to get over the 'but that's not the way we do it at home!' thing, but I know it's hard sometimes. I find it helps to remind myself how staggeringly different their childhood is to mine - to them, changing countries, changing schools, changing languages, changing and adapting as they go and having no fixed preconceptions, IS their normal.

Do consider just letting him fit in, letting him take the exam like all his friends without being negative and mocking about the whole process, letting him go to camp, and not holding him back just because you didn't have a physical when you were eleven. I expect he's doing lots of things you didn't do as a child - this is just another one.

JRG67

_Clueless$y$t€m_

What 'facts' weren't right?
You're not middle aged?
It's not early Thursday morning in the UK where you are and you don't post mostly contentious drivel?
You don't take medication?
You've mentioned hitler and/or the nazis in at least 2 threads and not even been close to being slightly witty?
You overuse emoticons?

JRG67

Are you my exwife???
You tell me the facts. Where am I now? Stop cyber-stalking please.:

dlake02

I broke a tooth soon after moving here. I was ripped off to the tune of $2000 for a root canal. I then needed posts which dentist A couldn't do so sent me to his "friend" that cost me another $4000.

Dentist B didn't do crowns. He sent me to dentist C who placed a Cerec crown for $6500. I got an infection. I was sent to Doctor D who charged me $200 just to walk in through the door, and then cost me nearly $100 in antibiotics.

I then had to go back to dentist C to have the crown refitted - another $1500.

I have comprehensive dental and medical coverage through work for which I pay over $4500/year plus my employer matches. Guess how much I was out-of-pocket ?

Yes - that's right. The WHOLE amount as apparently breaking a tooth is "preventable" had I had regular medical exams in the good old US of A. 45+ years of UK exams didn't count.

5 years ago, I had a similar experience in the UK. The TOTAL bill was #800 of which BUPA paid 95%. Had I not had private coverage, it would have cost me #60 on the NHS.

The medical "profession" is crooked here and needs to learn from us Europeans how to do it properly. I will fully accept that somethings here and there are just different not better or worse, but as far as medical is concerned, daily it amazes me that there isn't civil unrest demanding change for what should be a 1st world service in a 1st world country.

dlake02

So, if this was a national requirement in order to build a healthy society and was provided by the State and acted upon year-after-year for every child, yes, I would be perfectly happy, and I'd probably be telling my brother back in the UK how the US health service was ahead of the screening in the NHS.

But, this isn't. This is being asked for by an organisation that already has a very dubious track record in terms of both child protection and private records, expecting me to entrust them with personal, confidential information for my son to take part in a camp, the like of which he has been doing for 6+ years every year in the UK !

My sister-in-law deals with this on a daily basis as a primary school teacher, and we've had her on the phone in tears telling us about some of the children in her care. They get training in spotting abuse and neglect, and in the course of her 20+ year career, I know that she has had to provide witness in having children taken into care by Social Services. I hope and trust that the US education system does the same here - school teachers pick up so much from their children. It never ends well - going into care and splitting from a family is a double-edged sword. Very, very sad.

JRG67

I think that a lot of American doctors are in a Catch-22 situation. Often they are held ransom to the pharmaceutical companies. Because America is such a litigious society, the doctors have to pay astronomical amounts of insurance to cover their clinics and themselves incase they are sued for malpractice. I know of many "wealthy" doctors who are actually in deep financial debt. In many ways NHS doctors have it easier than their counter-parts in the States.

JRG67

I very much enjoyed the part in The Adams Family film, when the children are sent off to summer camp...The Thanksgiving Day party is hilarious and the punishment hut...

dlake02

Oh there are problems in the NHS GP system, though. The main one is a hang-over from nationalisation - no-one has had the gumption to draw the GPs into direct employment by the NHS, so they hold the entire system to ransom by it's balls.

It is starting to change with the new contract and the fact that most of them are so damn busy that they can no longer do any of the lucrative private work they used to. Also, many are just saying 'f**k the long hours' and cutting back to 3-4 days per week to get a decent work/family balance.

Actually, America seems quite a timid and scared society - people come out with all these dumb-arsed rules about everything which the average Brit would just ignore....

Speedwell

Oh, it's not timidity... it's liability. We think we have the rule of law here... we really have the rule of lawyers.

dlake02

I always remember the first time I came to the US, hearing the announcement at SFO - "the services of solicitors are not allowed in and around the airport."

If only that were true....

rallybug

I was in school in the 1980s too, and yes there was only the BCG there.

I did have the doctor check for un-descended testicles as part of a general checkup when I had my polio sugar lump booster etc, which would've been around 12 or 13, or so? Can't remember now, it was over 25 years ago

SarahG

Perhaps it was different in Scotland. Over the 80s-90s when I was in school I had annual height, weight, sight and hearing checks. I had a spine check & they listened to my heart and lungs in Primary school. I remember those polio cube things. BCG, Rubella vaccinations in Secondary school. I may have forgotten other stuff.

I remember my mum going ape shit at the nurse at Primary school as I was the only one who had her heart listened to and the nurse told me I was not allowed to do PE anymore. I went home really upset and my mum was furious. The nurse said she had read my file that was in school and saw I'd had heart surgery as a toddler and she decided I was unfit for sport. My mum went mental. Asked where she got her cardiac training, what specialist training had she received and the kicker was when she asked if she actually knew what the procedure I'd had was for. She had no idea. My mum said I had been given the all clear by the top specialist in Edinburgh who had performed my surgery when I was 5 and that the nurse in school had no business telling me, then 8, that I couldn't do sports. If I was to ever have a medical again then my mum was to be there or another nurse was to perform it. The nurse never came near me again and if I was ever sick at school someone else dealt with me.